We’re excited to announce that the Japanese version of Discover to Deliver is now available. We deeply appreciate Mr. Taku Fujii, of OGIS-RI, for his excellent work in translating our book for a whole new audience.

Discover to Deliver: Agile Product Planning and Analysis has helped professionals all over the world to collaboratively conceive, deliver and support software products and systems. Many thanks to Taku-san for his thoroughness and professionalism in preparing the Japanese translation. Continue reading

When you see Agile business analysis and product management as a topic for multi-day, deep conversions, you’ve entered the world of Agile Open Jam.

For the second year in a row, the Agile Open Jam on “Business Analysis and Product Management in Agile” was a big hit at the Building Business Capability conference.

This is the second Agile Open Jam EBG has hosted (last year, Ellen hosted), and we were jazzed yet again by the enthusiasm, sharing, and energy the Open Jam generated. Dozens and dozens of folks participated—proposing provocative topics, diving into deep conversations, and networking with kindred spirits. Continue reading

What happens with PMI conference attendees encounter a new way to interact about Agile?
We found out when I hosted another first: an Agile Open Jam with global project managers. With the help of some excellent co-facilitators, I conducted an Agile Open Jam at the PMI® Global Congress 2014-North America, with the theme of Business Analysis and Product Management in Agile. Continue reading

Have you heard? PMI has entered the business analysis space. They have a new certification—the PMI Professional in Business Analysis (PMI-PBA?)—with entry requirements similar to IIBA®’s Certified Business Analysis Professional™ (CPAB®). Continue reading | 3 Comments

I recently returned from co-hosting the first Product Management Agile Open Jam. What a great experience! Our goal was to “inspire and ignite” the product management community—and from the energy in the space, I’d say we succeeded. To get a glimpse into what it was like, check out these scenes from the 2014 Product Management Festival (PMF) Agile Open Jam in Zurich. Continue reading

I’m excited about my involvement in the first ever Agile Open Jam specifically for product managers. This unconference within a conference is part of September’s Product Management Festival in Zurich and is sponsored by the Agile Alliance. The announcement below, posted by the Product Management Festival team, highlights the event:

Congratulations. You’re now an agile “product owner,” the champion for your product. No biggie–you just have ultimate accountability for the health and well-being of your product. You “own” the product vision, deeply and emphatically understanding customer needs, keeping pulse of changing stakeholder values, and making continual decisions on what to build (or not), and when. This is a tall order.

Maybe you came into this work from being a product manager, having been in marketing, customer service, finance, business analysis, engineering, sales, or some other business or technical area. Or perhaps you came into being a product owner directly from one of those roles. You likely understand the aptitudes and aptitudes of a great product manager. Continue reading | 8 Comments

If you’ve been a product manager for a few years, you already know what I’m about to say. Product management is a hard job. The most successful product managers share these traits:

They are well versed in their products

They stay attuned to their customers

They can lead and communicate a vision equally well with engineering teams and the c-suite crowd

They have a knack for sifting through and prioritizing multiple (and often competing) wants and needs

If that’s not enough, the best product managers also share a very unique attitude: they are empathic and curious, while balancing a ruthless drive for specificity with a poetic tolerance for ambiguity.

To help make the point that product management is a tough but rewarding job, I wanted to share some factors to look for in a great product manager. Continue reading

Are you headed to Agile 2014 this year? We are—and we are eager to introduce audiences there to our unique approach to agile requirements.

You’ll find EBG’s Nanette Brown and me speaking in the Working with Customers track, as we explore ways to discover a product’s quality attributes—things like performance, usability, robustness, and more. EBG’s VP of Quality and Delivery Mary Gorman is co-presenting with Terry Weigmann in the Testing and Quality Assurance track on the topic of test analysis and how it enables teams to strengthen and produce higher quality requirements on agile projects.

In this blog post, we want to offer you a sneak peak into these sessions, both in terms of how crucial they are for success with agile and also in regard to why they were chosen for this year’s program. Oh, and if you can’t make it to Orlando, we’ll be tweeting throughout the conference, so follow us (@ellengott, @mbgorman, @nanettebrwn) the week of July 28th! Continue reading

Most of our clients share the same goal: deliver value. Yet often we find that these same clients cannot define what value looks like for their companies, or determine how to use value to inform project decisions.

We’ve identified 4 key factors to help your team bring value into focus:

Involve the Right People

Define Value Transparently

Look Toward the Short Term

Have the Vision to Change

Involve the Right People

Defining a product’s desired result, before building it, is fundamental to that product’s success. To do this successfully, you need to identify all of the key stakeholders from the customer, business, and technology realms. These stakeholders need to work together, as collaborating product partners, to envision the product, define goals, and specify measurable objectives, thereby creating a high-level view of the desired product outcomes. Having these key markers will ensure that the team is always building the most valuable thing. Continue reading